Projects in Iraq

MADRE

Projects in Iraq

ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW

Vision

MADRE is an international women’s human rights organization that works towards a world in which all people enjoy the fullest range of individual and collective human rights; in which resources are shared equitably and sustainably; in which women play leadership roles in all aspects of society; and in which people have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives.

Mission

MADRE uses human rights to advance social, environmental, and economic justice, understanding that human rights are not a hierarchy, but an indivisible set of standards for all people to enjoy. MADRE’s focus is on delivering results to women and families worldwide—meeting both immediate, local needs and creating sustainable, systemic change. To advance our objectives, MADRE concentrates its work at the intersection of the human rights movement, the global women’s movement, and various social movements in which we participate.

Goals

MADRE’s three programs—Peace Building, Women’s Health/Combating Violence against Women, and Economic and Environmental Justice—are enacted through the following four strategic initiatives:

Partnerships for Change

MADRE promotes structural changes through partnerships between women from the global North and South, and builds long-term relationships with our partners based on our joint work for the realization of individual and collective human rights. MADRE promotes diversity in women’s organizations and sees differences among women as a source of collective strength in our shared work for change.

Human Rights Advocacy

MADRE advocates for international human rights standards based on the principles that human rights are inherent, universal, and indivisible, and with the knowledge that human rights standards are a work in progress, which we must refine, improve, and expand in keeping with our organizational vision.

Public Education and Media

Because we believe that a cogent understanding of the social, economic, and political conditions that confront us is critical to transforming those conditions, MADRE works to communicate the impacts of policies of national governments, international financial institutions, and other centers of power on women and their families worldwide and to formulate and press for alternatives to those policies.

Resource Mobilization

MADRE works to: empower our members to invest in their values by participating directly in our work; build a culture of social change philanthropy by educating and learning from funders and their networks; and democratize access to resources by shifting donor paradigms.

NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED

Within weeks of the US invasion in 2003, a surge of attacks on women in Iraq began. US authorities did nothing to stop the violence, and soon the attacks spread. Within a year, Islamists were killing Iraqi artists, intellectuals, professionals, ethnic and religious minorities, lesbians and gays—indeed, anyone whom the Islamists perceived as a threat to their agenda. Iraqi women have endured a wave of gender-based violence, including widespread abductions, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, “honor killings” (which occur when a male relative murders a woman who has made autonomous decisions about issues such as marriage, divorce, and whether and with whom to have sex), domestic abuse, torture in detention, beheadings, shootings, and public hangings. Iraqi artists, musicians, academics, and teachers have all been targeted by Islamists became they represent a potential challenge to the killers’ vision of society. Women journalists, artists, and intellectuals, who are perceived as posing a threat to the transformation of Iraq into an Islamist state, are killed because they commit the double offense of advocating a secular society and being accomplished working women. Much of this violence is systematic—directed by the Islamist militias that mushroomed across Iraq after the US toppled the mostly secular Ba'ath regime.

In many areas, Islamist militants now patrol the streets, beating and harassing women who are not “properly” dressed or behaved. Girls are being kept out of school and many women are now forbidden by their families to be in public without a male escort. The sharp rise in harassment, abduction, and rape has made women afraid to leave their homes. “Honor killings” have also increased. Further compounding this horrifying situation is the fact that under Iraqi law, these killings are not even considered murder: if a killer can demonstrate that his motive was restoring family honor tarnished by the woman’s transgressions, his sentence is usually less than one year.

Despite the fact that most of these attacks on women occur in public, violence against Iraqi women continues to be perceived mainly as a "private" or family matter, somehow outside the realm of "politics." Moreover, the characterization of violence against Iraqi women as "cultural" in nature deemphasizes the ways that such violence is used as a means toward political ends and obscures the role of the United States in failing to prevent and prosecute crimes. Many people in the US view crimes against women in Iraq as an invariable part of Iraqi, Arab, or Muslim “culture.” But looking to Islam or “Muslim culture” as the source of violence against women only serves to dehumanize Muslims. In fact, culture alone explains very little. Like all human behavior, violence against women does have a cultural dimension, but like culture itself, acts of violence against women are shaped by social factors (such as poverty) and discourses (such as women’s rights) that change—and can be changed—in ways that can either help combat or promote violence. Culture is a context, but not a cause or a useful explanation for violence, in Iraq or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the mainstream press, the alternative media, and the anti-war movement have all failed to identify the connections between the attack on Iraqi women and the spiraling violence that has culminated in civil war. But violence against women is not incidental to Iraq's mounting civilian death toll and civil war—it is a key to understanding the wider crisis, because women are seen as the carriers of group identity and, for that reason, are targeted as representatives of their communities.

Now, more than ever, there is a tremendous need for the US populace to raise their awareness of gender-based violence in Iraq and the realities faced by Iraqi women, to lend our support to help them meet their immediate needs, and to work together to ensure that their basic human rights are protected.

GOALS AND ACTIVITIES

The goals of MADRE’s work with OWFI in Iraq are to protect Iraqi women who are struggling to stay alive and empower them to build a movement to ensure their basic human rights. The activities that are being implemented to accomplish these goals include:

1. Safe Houses and The Underground Railroad for Iraqi Women

The Safe Houses network currently consists of five shelters in Baghdad, Nasariyeh, Kirkuk, and Erbil. In addition to co-founding and continuing to support OWFI’s five shelters, MADRE also co-founded and supports The Underground Railroad for Iraqi Women, which sustains an even broader network of volunteers and safe houses throughout the country that are prepared to help women fleeing family violence and “honor killings.” Just as enslaved African Americans relied on a secret network of courageous individuals like Harriet Tubman to help them make their way to freedom, Iraqi women who are threatened with “honor killings” need allies and an escape route.

Activities for the Safe Houses network include:

·  Offer women who are fleeing their homes secure transportation to the shelters or other refuge;

·  Provide food, clothing, toiletries, bedding, and medical attention as needed, for women and their children; and

·  Employ five staff members to run each center, including one part-time counselor to conduct intake interviews and provide individual and group trauma counseling for residents and their children; two full-time security staff to patrol and safeguard the shelter; and two full-time shelter attendants.

2. Human Rights Trainings and Advocacy

As part of our Human Rights Advocacy Strategy, an integral component of MADRE’s work with OWFI is to provide program participants with a better understanding of their rights under Iraqi and international law, and empower them to demand recognition of those rights in the private and public spheres, helping them see themselves as human rights advocates rather than victims. Activities include:

·  Offer MADRE-led trainings on women’s political participation, community organizing, human rights, and women’s rights (especially the right to a life free from violence); and

·  Facilitate travel to the US and Canada for OWFI's Chairperson, Yanar Mohammed, for one month per year, enabling her to advocate for Iraqi women’s rights at the international level.

3. Equality Newspaper

OWFI publishes a newspaper called Equality to inform people around the world about women’s realities in Iraq and to connect Iraqi women in Iraq with resources for assistance and social change. The paper is distributed weekly; has a readership of nearly 10,000; and enables Iraqi women committed to human rights to connect with one another.

4. Art Action for Peace

OWFI and MADRE are supporting a brave group of young Sunni and Shia artists and poets who are coming together to demand peace. According to the logic of civil war, these young people from warring communities should be enemies. Instead, they are joining together through art and poetry, calling for an end to civil war, and working to create a society that promotes human rights and freedom from occupation and religious coercion. Art Action for Peace gatherings include public performances where people come together to share their poetry and music. These gatherings have been banned by Islamists who systematically torture and kill artists and musicians. Several members of Art Action for Peace have been attacked, but Iraqis who hunger for peace flock to these gatherings despite the danger.

5. Public Education and Media

Because we believe that an educated public can participate more effectively in shaping foreign policy, MADRE also conducts research and works—through our Public Education and Media Strategy—to raise awareness in the US and around the world about the political, economic, and social effects of the US occupation of Iraq and US policies worldwide. A key component of this strategy is ensuring that the voices of our partners are heard, and amplifying their call for justice through every means at our disposal. Activities include publishing quarterly newsletters that reach tens of thousands of people; running a website, www.MADRE.org, that receives 30,000 visits monthly; and speaking regularly at universities, places of worship, and community centers across the US.

Our activities in 2007 to raise awareness in the US about US policy in Iraq have included:

·  Press conferences, panel discussions, and a speaking tour on the recently released MADRE report Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq, a groundbreaking report on the incidence, causes, and legalization of gender-based violence in Iraq under US occupation;

·  Distribution of the report through MADRE’s website at www.madre.org, which receives 30,000 visits per month;

·  Interviews and citations related to the report in The Chicago Sun-Times, Ms. magazine, Democracy Now!, Voice of America, and on ABC News Now, Nation.com, Yahoo! News, and WBAI and KPFK radio; and

·  A national speaking tour in the US in April 2007.

Upcoming plans include:

·  A Spring 2008 speaking tour of US colleges, universities, and communities, featuring Vivian Stromberg, Executive Director of MADRE, and Yanar Mohammed, the Baghdad-based Chairperson of OWFI. The tour will focus on women’s realities in US-occupied Iraq, and provide audiences with tools to advocate in the US for changes in US policy—creating the potential for the construction of a truly democratic and sovereign Iraq.

OUTCOMES AND BENEFICIARIES

The anticipated outcomes of this component of the project are:

·  Increased number of Iraqi women who survive immediate threats to their lives and ultimately live free from violence and abuse;

·  Increased number of Iraqi women who understand their rights and are empowered to resist violence at home and in the public sphere;

·  Stronger Iraqi laws and more stringent enforcement of those laws regarding family violence and “honor killings”;

·  Increased number of individuals who are able to express their desire for peace and freedom from religious coercion through art; and

·  Heightened awareness in the US of the realities faced by Iraqi women and increased access to tools for positive change.

Beneficiaries

Some of the women that are relying on OWFI for help live in situations of ongoing family violence; others are women who have been assaulted or raped and are now threatened with murder by their family members for having brought “shame” on the family. These women often have no resources of their own and, with no financial security, see no way to provide for themselves or their children if they choose to escape. Increasing political and economic instability in Iraq has brought violence into more and more women’s lives, cutting across class and ethnic barriers.

Specific beneficiaries of MADRE’s program in Iraq include:

·  Approximately 55 Iraqi women and their children per month housed by OWFI’s five shelters, which have saved the lives of 300 women since 2004;

·  Approximately 120 Iraqi women each year served by The Underground Railroad for Iraqi Women and MADRE/OWFI human rights trainings in Iraq;

·  10,000 Iraqi and international readers of Equality newspaper, currently published semi-annually;

·  Approximately 225 participants in—and audience members of—Art Action for Peace events;

·  25,000 MADRE members in the US reached throughout the year by MADRE public education materials and speaking events; and

·  Tens of thousands of people in the US and internationally reached by MADRE’s interviews with print and broadcast media.

EVALUATION

Our ongoing evaluation processes take into account the importance of evaluations of effort and evaluations of impact, and enable MADRE to identify lessons learned, and assess the quality of our interventions in diverse spaces. Our evaluation methodology includes site visits, interviews with participants, and ongoing monitoring of projects’ progress toward stated goals. Some critical areas that we regularly evaluate include:

·  Project’s ability to meet expressed needs within the target community;

·  Participation of local leaders and community members in the project’s planning and implementation;